That success, as Tim Golik, Director of Program Management at Microsoft, puts it, is built on the back of a strong culture of innovation and engineering. In one of the closing sessions at Microsoft's Ignite conference this year, Golik provided an in-depth look at the development of the Surface line, alongside some recollections of his own experiences since he joined the team four years ago.

While he provides far more details than can be covered in this article, if you're interested in how the Redmond giant went from being a software company to one of the biggest names in the high-end PC market today, you can check out the video above.